


My Soul to Keep

by justhavesex



Category: South Park, South Park RPF
Genre: M/M, Soulmates, character death!!!, hardcore angst, v sad
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-23
Updated: 2018-01-23
Packaged: 2019-03-08 11:54:38
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,436
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13457724
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/justhavesex/pseuds/justhavesex
Summary: Their first kiss happens not four years later, not even a few months later, its an awkward clash of lips and teeth after four days that Tweek attacks him with out of absolutely nowhere when they developed a somewhat knowing conscious (at age of three years old and six months) in understanding of what their relationship really was: soulmates.





	My Soul to Keep

* * *

 

_"I really don't know what 'I love you' means._

_I think it means 'Don't leave me here alone.'"_

— Neil Gaiman

* * *

 

 

A lot of people say that they're lucky.

Well, he guesses technically he  _is_  lucky, or at the very least Tweek is lucky because if they hadn't practically known they were soulmates since Tweek was born Craig probably wouldn't have spent his entire life searching for his 'fated' one like most people do. Maybe that's why they were born practically near each other,  _maybe_. He had a soul mate before he even understood the meaning of the word, the true  _heaviness_  of it. Most people have phases in their lives, most people struggle for  _years_  by themselves searching for the words printed on their skin: ironically, Tweek's first word was printed gently over Craig's heart—a symbol of pure love, a love that isn't difficult—and it's just one word: Craig _._

Craig remembers it mostly because they were two years old, and Tweek had managed to say his name before anything else in a whispered breathless rush of air. It was the response to Craig's first words to Tweek being, "Tweek?" in response to his mother when she was explaining that they are soulmates to Craig as Tweek and Craig had babbled in baby-toddler nonsense and it was the first formed word even before mom or dad, mostly because he was delayed in speaking, but still, it's funny. Most soulmates have generic words and sentences but their words are acknowledgements of the bond they already knew existed.

Craig had managed to spend a whole single month of his life without a soulmate, because in November a month after his birthday, Tweek was born with  _his_  name like Craig was born with his own name over his heart as well and Tweek's parents had knocked on the door and  _voila_! Craig's life was suddenly a two-person life, nothing he did from that moment on was alone. He had a soulmate, wow the world is so  _pink_ , so great, he's so fucking  _lucky_.

He is lucky, he isn't that much of an asshole not to acknowledge that, some people  _never_  find their soulmate because they have no words on their skin: because they've never said anything to each other, or people spend their entire lives and when they're old and dying, they finally find them. But it's suffocating to always have someone, he doesn't know how to explain it so people understand, but he's never been  _alone_. This sort of co-dependence can't be healthy, he's pretty sure, even between soulmates.

"Now remember unlike most people," Mr. Garrison says, giving Craig a pointed look of disgust, "Most people don't find their soulmates easily, or at all because of how generic most words are."

There was a time Craig had decided maybe Tweek and him  _aren't_  soulmates because of a fight they had over a dinosaur when they were 6, because just someone saying his name isn't really a sure-all that Tweek is his soulmate, even if Tweek's tattoo is practically the same, and Craig had listed everyone's first words to him in order, and had a dawning realization that someone just saying his name  _is_  unique: no one is just going to breathlessly whisper out the name of some stranger.

 _Maybe we are lucky,_  Craig can't help but think in mild pride, he's never once considered himself lucky before, but he guesses if he's going to be lucky in any way, he should be lucky when it comes to Tweek.

"Gay," Cartman grumbles in retaliation.

"Don't be a jealous nancy-dancy just because you don't have a soulmate tattoo," Mr. Garrison bites back and Craig can't help but smirk.

 

 

**

 

 

Their first kiss happens not four years later, not even a few months later, it's an awkward clash of lips and teeth after  _four days_  that Tweek attacks him with out of absolutely nowhere when they developed a somewhat knowing conscious (at age of three years old and six months) in understanding of  _what_  their relationship really was: soulmates.

Craig had laughed awkwardly after the kiss and had reached for Tweek's hand.

Their relationship had continued mostly like that, abrupt but always in—there's no other word, he's sure—but always orbiting around Craig in existence. Tweek's presence was always a constant, Tweek comfortable and predictable to him and there's nothing he liked more. He loved the smell of coffee that lingered on Tweek's bottom lip,  _not the top_ , Tweek was never a subtle scent, he was always strong—in a good or bad way—and sometimes Craig swears he could smell the anxiety on Tweek.

He blinks warily through his lashes, they feel heavy and he feels drowsy and he's never felt ever so awake but so  _asleep_  at any point of his life. He turns on his side, to glare at the down-turned picture frame of him and Tweek. He can't remember why he put it down so he couldn't see the awkward pose Craig is making as Tweek smiles into Craig's neck shyly, Craig can still remember Clyde obnoxiously telling them to  _do this properly_! and something like  _you'll wish you took more photos when your older!_  and Clyde had been so adamant that Craig would be  _thankful_  for Clyde wasting their afternoon to make them pose for soon-to graduate photos.

Craig blinks exactly four times and he can  _feel_  them.

"Oh," he says into the cold of his room because it's winter now and it get's dark at 4 PM—not like Craig ever wakes up or ever  _tries_  to leave his bed—but his throat constricts suddenly in realization and he can't breathe. He never can when he first wakes up, sometimes it why he never even wants to sleep, because the moment he's awake again he has to remember and then  _"cope_ "—he does this loosely, at best—and he struggles to breathe, trying to remember how Tweek would try and calm himself down in moments he got too high.

"You up?" Clyde asks, finally breaking the wheezing-silence, and Craig manages to sit upwards, trying to feel more irritated than sad because at least irritation is more productive, "It's almost 6, dude."

"Cool," Craig offers instead of pointing out the obvious that his entire life is falling apart, it's  _literally_  falling apart at the seams and Craig can only blearily watch as they're tugged, thread by thread, just like his sanity. Tweek, sitting somewhere behind Clyde, looks down to Clyde with an obvious frown before looking back up at Craig.

He's already accepted that he's gone off of the deep end, he's  _accepted_  it. It was bound to happen. Clyde slowly follows to where Craig is looking blankly too, before turning his attention back to Craig with a frown. "So, uh, tomorrow's the day. How are you holding up?"

"What?"

Clyde swallows roughly as though he was semi-expecting Craig to ask ' _what_ ' to what he's referring too, but head-strong Clyde continues, "Tweek's funeral—"

"Fuck you," Craig decides on delicately before flopping back into his bed and stubbornly turning his back to Clyde. Everyone keeps telling him Tweek is fucking  _dead_  but he can fucking see Tweek in the corner of his room, hovering and looking at Craig and looking very-much alive, sure he isn't saying shit but sometimes Tweek get's really quiet. Clyde is just a fucking idiot, a fucking  _asshole_  who likes to play not-so-funny jokes. "No, really, fuck you. Go fuck yourself. Fucking asshole."

"Dude," Clyde says and Craig isn't sure if it's the way Clyde's tone catches at the very last syllable or the way his voice sounds so  _sad_ , but Craig can't help but feel that strange fucking sinking feeling in his stomach again and he wishes people would  _stop_  trying to instill this feeling into him, "I know this is really hard for you, but you need to be there, for  _Tweek_."

Craig rises slowly and in that moment he catches Tweek's eye and he swears to god Tweek smiles to him.

"Tweek?" He asks, to the Tweek in his room because suddenly Tweek isn't there anymore, he's fucking  _gone_ , the hole in Craig's stomach collapses and he leans forward, gasping for  _something_  and he can't breathe and all he can hear is that asshole fucking  _Clyde_  rattling on about something or fucking who-cares, because when Craig grasps his chest and looks down, over his heart where his name should be printed is blank.

It's fucking blank.

"Fuck," Craig wheezes out, hearing his parents in the not-so-distance and some other stranger muttering about hyperventilation. "It's  _blank_!"

 

 

**

"Oh god," Tweek hisses.

Tweek is nursing a cup of coffee in his hands and jerks at the comment made by himself and Craig is boredly focusing on him as his eyes actually come into working function, unable to understand why exactly he's just laying down watching Tweek mutter to himself about gnomes at god-knows-what-time as he freaks out about how he just spilled coffee all over himself and Craig doesn't usually wake up from Tweek being up at night—Tweek is  _always_  up at night—but regardless he had woken up abruptly to the sound of Tweek's soft whisper of ' _oh god_ '.

"Tweek?"

"Ack," Tweek hisses, and Craig wants to laugh because he had obviously  _scared_  Tweek into spilling some coffee over his hands, "What?"

"I don't know," Craig says honestly because he doesn't know. Somewhere, in the back of his hazed-sleepiness, he feels like everything is macro important.  _What is this_? There's some inexplicable tightness in his chest, and a burning sensation in his stomach. He exhales gently and pushes the feeling away correlating it to them moving up to middle school tomorrow. He's not generally a nervous type, but maybe Tweek is finally rubbing off on him in strange ways. It was bound to happen, he guesses. "What's up?" 

"We're growing up so fast man," Tweek grumbles to himself gently, crawling forward and Craig moves over to the side a bit so Tweek can lay beside him. Sometimes Tweek falls asleep when they cuddle, sometimes he doesn't. Craig has stopped trying to enforce good sleeping behaviour on Tweek months ago and has just learned to roll with the punches, Clyde had once joked it was like Craig was practicing for a newborn baby with erratic sleeping behaviours that is constantly waking up their parents and Craig couldn't help but agree. "It's scary."

Craig huffs out an amused snort, "Honestly I think it's moving slow. I can't wait to grow up."

"That's cause you aren't  _scared_ ," Tweek hisses back, suddenly taking a look of panic as he bolts upright to look down at Craig, "What if you die? Oh god, what would I do?"

"Honey," Craig offers, reaching out to cup Tweek's face and suddenly he understands why his heart hurts so much, now he get's it. This is a dream. What did he say again? It wasn't even that long ago, but memories keep slipping from him the older he get's and the more that occur. That's the scary part, that one day he'll forget most of Tweek, that he won't be able to remember the small things, the things Tweek  _lived_  for. Gently, he whispers, "I'm not going to die before you."

 

**

 

 

"You can't be like this forever," Token says, voice just barely above a whisper and Craig has never been the kind of person to actually express any form of 'weak' emotions, but in this moment he feels so fucking  _vulnerable_  and it's awful, it's really awful.

"I'm not running from anything," Craig hollows out from his throat, the words coming out guttural and awful sounding, it sounds raw and scratched.

"Dude, you got into like  _four_  different universities and had a plan, you can't just haul yourself up in your room like this and pretend nothing is happening." Out of everyone, Craig thinks Token is probably handling his grief the best. Clyde? Not so much. Clyde is a fucking cry-baby and he already lost his mom as a kid, losing a friend too in his late teens wasn't exactly an easy blow and an even less easy blow to Craig who can't even comfort his friend because he doesn't even want to be around anybody anymore. Aside from daily pictures of various cute animals and that one time Clyde came to visit him after Tweek's accident and before Tweek's funeral, him and Clyde have pretty much circled each other nervously. Token? Token has been insistent on interrupting Craig's mopping, dragging him out of his room twice a week to do something 'fun' and every time Craig get's back home he feels a dry taste of nothing in his stomach stink in.

Because nothing is fun anymore.

"Whatever," Craig mumbles, turning his back to Token in an obvious form of I'm-not-talking-about-this, he's stubbornly refused to talk about  _it_ with anyone and he'll keep doing that until the day he dies. There's only one person he wants to talk too and they aren't even around anymore, so there isn't any point, there really  _isn't_.

"Just talk to me," Token says and Craig can feel the desperation in his voice and Craig wonders if Token has been talking to his parents again about him in their stupid secret Craig meetings that he knows Clyde attends out of guilt, because Token is starting to sound like his mother, even the tinge of desperation in his voice is the same.

"About what?" All their conversations end up like this lately, it's getting boring and repetitive and his room doesn't smell like coffee anymore, it smells like fresh-cut grass and whatever floral scented cologne Token wears and he hates it. He fucking  _hates_  it. Everyone keeps asking him to open up his goddamn mouth and explain how he's feeling but there is no words to explain how he's feeling, there isn't a single fucking thing he could say to make this better. "If you're checking to see if I know Tweek's dead, I fucking do, so get lost."

Token sighs and for a second Craig thinks maybe he's actually won this argument, "I think you should see a therapist or something."

"Nope."

" _Craig_ ," Token tacks on in the same tone Craig's mom uses and  _yeah_ , they've definitely been talking too much, "You need to actually handle this at some point, it's already been a year and your parents are getting really worried, even Tweek's parents are worried about you."

 _Low blow_ , Craig can't help but think, but it works because he sits up abruptly at that, glowering at Token who smiles at him gently. "I miss him too you know, obviously not as much as you, but he was my friend all throughout my childhood and  _because_  he was my friend I know he'd want me to help you. I have a soulmate too dude, I know how hard this is for you."

" _Your_  soulmate is still  _alive_ ," Craig hisses back, suddenly feeling a lick of anger. No one understands, no one  _can_  understand: Tweek was one of his limbs, Tweek is tattooed right on his  _heart_. It isn't a matter of learning how to live, it's a matter of learning how to re-live. His mouth feels dry, and in a moment of weakness he offers to Token, "I don't even know what I'm supposed to do without him around."

"You guys have been attached too each other since like, birth," Token's smile is wobbly, gentle and  _coaxing_ , he's playing the role of a therapist and a caring friend, but that's not what he needs or wants. Craig doesn't  _want_  Token to play his therapist, no one should even have to play his therapist. But isn't that the kicker, as his dad used to say when Craig had felt slighted by the world: ' _son, this world doesn't owe you nothing._ ' His dad was right, the world  _doesn't_  owe him anything and that's why it took Tweek away, just because it fucking  _can_.

Craig swallows roughly, "Yeah," he says, his voice too light for it to actually belong to him, "Yeah."

 

**

 

 

Craig got the call Thursday morning, November 2018.

He likes to think of this day as the day his life had finally come to a complete stop: finally, the circle has reached it's end, finally, he's greeted by the misery that should have followed the moment he first fell in love with Tweek, all those years ago when they were children.

No one really expects  _the_ call. Not really, even if your loved one has been missing for two years there's always a part of yourself that holds on that they're okay, that they'll come back to you no matter what. Because isn't that what all the romance movies say? True love beats all, isn't that it? They got engaged 3 weeks ago, in four months they planned to get married, that was the plan. It was true love, they found each other as  _babies_ , they've been dating so long and had so many more goddamn years ahead of them none of it made any sense. Tweek was supposed to grow old with him, to be there until the very fucking  _end_.

"Craig," Tweek's mom said over the line and her voice sounded too happy and light for the news that followed, "Tweek has passed away."

What people don't tell you about death is the sudden blossoming of numbness that takes over you at it's declaration. Craig choked, stumbled and grabbed at the kitchen counter, fingers shaking as the birds outside sung to the good weather, the beginning of the sun creeping in through the blinds as the house alights in a soft haloed glow. It was so picturesque, the entire world was cheery and beautiful and yet the only good thing in his entire life was gone. The coffee machine behind him beeped shrill and obnoxiously—it was set for when Tweek would arrive in the morning, perfect and warm—just as he shoved his shoes on, pulled his jacket on and ran out of the door.

Before he could even make it around the second block the thin line of sanity he was trying to hold onto finally  _snapped_ and he couldn't help but lean forward onto himself, tears falling from his eyes and onto his knee's as he stareed wide-eyed into his open palms, lips and fingers trembling and everything around him blurred in noise and vision. He wanted to be protect Tweek like a knight in shining armor when he was a kid; he wanted to become Tweek's  _everything_.

People always say, as though it's comforting, that they would want you to ' _live on_ ' but that's for the sake of the living.

Craig isn't fucking stupid, if he died he's pretty sure Tweek would have followed him immediately. There would be no form of hesitation, he would go kill himself and join Craig wherever he's gone off too, so Clyde's dumb arguments of Tweek wanting him to live on seem so goddamn insensible. So fucking  _stupid._

"Oh," Craig says in realization, looking to the portrait of him and Tweek smiling gently—Craig realizing, somewhere in the back of his mind that Clyde had put the photo up again—in suddenly clarity everything makes  _sense_.

He was never meant to be lucky.

He get's up, and grabs his coat and in that moment everything circles in sudden clarity and he can finally breathe and think again like a normal person. Constantly his brain was stuffed full, but now everything flows out easily again and he slips downstairs. "Bye mom," he decides on, looking towards his dad and sister watching TV and he thinks maybe he should say something to them too but then they'd just get suspicious. He's sure they'll forgive him, honestly, he's probably sure they're surprised he already  _hasn't_.

"Where are you going?" She asks, head tilting sideways just a tiny bit and Craig tries to look as neutral as possible.

"Just gonna go for a walk, get air."

His mom hugs him long and sturdy, telling him about how proud she is that he's finally leaving the house on his own and Craig can only pat her back comfortingly. "Tweek would be proud of you, honey."

"Yeah mom," Craig says, nasally voice cracking and he wonders if she  _knows_ —a part of him feels like she  _does_ —but Craig pulls away from her embrace and glances to the figure of Tweek standing at his doorway, waving Craig over. He looks serene, gentle and soft in a haloed glow, softly, Craig smiles to Tweek, "I'll see you later, okay?"

 


End file.
